The nation and the city: urban festivals and cultural mobilisation

This article attempts to map the relations between nation‐building processes in 19th‐century E urope and city cultures with their urban sociability. Three patterns are surveyed: [1] the modern‐national assimilation of medieval and early‐modern city cultures (sample case: O rléans and the F rench cult of J oan of A rc); [2] the modular replication across cities of urban festivals as cultural mobilizers (sample case: the spread of F loral G ames festivals in S outhern F rance and N orthern S pain); [3] the reticulation of city‐based practices into a nationwide and nation‐building network (sample cases: the role of choral societies in G erman cultural nationalism; and its transnational knock‐on effect in the B altic P rovinces). By choosing the city as our social focus and placing it (or rather, its ideal‐type ‘ U rbania’) alongside G ellner's ideal‐types of ‘ M egalomania’ and ‘ R uritania’, we can avoid the finalism of studying regionalist and nationalist movements in the analytical framework of the post‐Versailles state system, and we gain a better understanding of the granulated, localized social basis of such movements and the translocally homogenizing role of culture.